Monday, October 12, 2015

More Guns Less Crime

An interview withJohn R. Lott, Jr.author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws

Question: What does the title mean: More Guns, Less Crime?

John R. Lott, Jr.: States
with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops
in violent crimes. Thirty-one states now have such laws—called
“shall-issue” laws. These laws allow adults the right to carry
concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of
significant mental illness.

Question: It just seems to
defy common sense that crimes likely to involve guns would be reduced by
allowing more people to carry guns. How do you explain the results?

Lott: Criminals are deterred
by higher penalties. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter
crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront
someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative
relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and
the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline
in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed
handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2
percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons.
First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are
uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second,
victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend
themselves.

Question: What is the basis for these numbers?

Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Question: Your argument about
criminals and deterrence doesn’t tell the whole story. Don’t
statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?

Lott: You are referring to
the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed
by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don’t
understand is that this “acquaintance murder” number also includes gang
members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers,
cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time,
prostitutes and their clients, and so on. “Acquaintance” covers a wide
range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed
by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers
have had criminal records as adults.

Question: But how about
children? In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were
killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won’t tragedies like
this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn’t this
be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more
lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting
in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was
already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good
guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple
victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These
were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or
injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting
seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime,
such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of “shall-issue” laws on
these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the
number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from
these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82
percent.

For other types of crimes, I find that both children as well as
adults are protected when law-abiding adults are allowed to carry
concealed handguns.

Finally, after extensively studying the number of accidental
shootings, there is no evidence that increasing the number of concealed
handguns increases accidental shootings. We know that the type of
person who obtains a permit is extremely law-abiding and possibly they
are extremely careful in how they take care of their guns.

The total
number of accidental gun deaths each year is about 1,300 and each year
such accidents take the lives of 200 children 14 years of age and under.
However, these regrettable numbers of lives lost need to be put into
some perspective with the other risks children face. Despite over 200
million guns owned by between 76 to 85 million people, the children
killed is much smaller than the number lost through bicycle accidents,
drowning, and fires. Children are 14.5 times more likely to die from
car accidents than from accidents involving guns.

Question: Wouldn’t allowing
concealed weapons increase the incidents of citizens attacking each
other in tense situations? For instance, sometimes in traffic jams or
accidents people become very hostile—screaming and shoving at one
another. If armed, might people shoot each other in the heat of the
moment?

Lott: During state
legislative hearings on concealed-handgun laws, possibly the most
commonly raised concern involved fears that armed citizens would attack
each other in the heat of the moment following car accidents. The
evidence shows that such fears are unfounded.

Despite millions of
people licensed to carry concealed handguns and many states having these
laws for decades, there has only been one case where a person with a
permit used a gun after a traffic accident and even in that one case it
was in self-defense.

Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won’t more guns put more women at risk?

Lott: Murder rates decline
when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun
represents a much larger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself
than it does for a man.

An additional woman carrying a concealed
handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more
than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder
rate for men.

Question: Aren’t you playing
into people’s fears and prejudices though? Don’t politicians pass
these shall-issue laws to mollify middle-class white suburbanites
anxious about the encroachment of urban minority crime?

Lott: I won’t speculate about
motives, but the results tell a different story. High crime urban
areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the
greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed
to carry concealed handguns.

Question: What about other
countries? It’s often argued that Britain, for instance, has a lower
violent crime rate than the USA because guns are much harder to obtain
and own.

Lott: The data analyzed in
this book is from the USA. Many countries, such as Switzerland, New
Zealand, Finland, and Israel have high gun-ownership rates and low crime
rates, while other countries have low gun ownership rates and either
low or high crime rates. It is difficult to obtain comparable data on
crime rates both over time and across countries, and to control for all
the other differences across the legal systems and cultures across
countries. Even the cross country polling data on gun ownership is
difficult to assess, because ownership is underreported in countries
where gun ownership is illegal and the same polls are never used across
countries.

Question: This is certainly
controversial and there are certain to be counter-arguments from those
who disagree with you. How will you respond to them?

Lott: Some people do use guns
in horrible ways, but other people use guns to prevent horrible things
from happening to them. The ultimate question that concerns us all is:
Will allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns save lives?

While there
are many anecdotal stories illustrating both good and bad uses of guns,
this question can only be answered by looking at data to find out what
the net effect is.

All of chapter seven of the book is devoted to answering
objections that people have raised to my analysis. There are of course
strong feelings on both sides about the issue of gun ownership and gun
control laws. The best we can do is to try to discover and understand
the facts. If you agree, or especially if you disagree with my
conclusions I hope you’ll read the book carefully and develop an
informed opinion.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html

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